The Chamber Orchestra of Europe's performance of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique was one of the most demented, demonic, and joyous rackets I've ever experienced in a concert hall. Celebrating their 25th anniversary, this world-class ensemble - an orchestra bred on long partnerships with conductors Claudio Abbado and Nikolaus Harnoncourt - swelled to full symphony orchestra size to deal with Berlioz's exotic orchestration, and was conducted by Douglas Boyd. It was a performance that had one slack-jawed with amazement at the audacity of Berlioz's opium-fuelled masterpiece.

Played with this kind of intensity and authority, every bar of the piece revealed a new sonority. These were not just shallow orchestral effects but expressions of new kinds of feeling. It wasn't just a case of following the progress of Berlioz's emotional programme from doomed infatuation to orgiastic immolation; this performance made you experience the hellish, ecstatic visions of Berlioz's musical journey first-hand.

The fire and brimstone of the final two movements were magnificently vivid, but it was the subtlety of the earlier movements that gave this performance its power. The second movement described a waltz whose escalating pleasure climaxed in a feverish vision of the beloved - a moment of cinematic brilliance. It's the first time that a composer dramatised the moment where pleasure becomes pain, and it was as shocking here as it must have been in 1830.

There was a sense of celebration in the COE's playing, above all in the virtuosity of the wind soloists, especially oboist François Leleux. Boyd, himself an oboist and founder member of the orchestra, led the players in an infectious performance of Haydn's Symphony No 6, Le Matin, propelled by the dazzling energy of leader Marieke Blankestijn's solos. Joan Rodgers was the sumptuous soloist in Mozart's Exsultate, Jubilate, completing a showcase of some of the best chamber orchestra playing you will hear anywhere.